Be Thou For The Who?
by Firaga Productions
Summary: Alchemists, be thou for the people. A case study into the lives of several state alchemists, and the ways in which they have gone right or wrong. [1. Shou Tucker]


**Be Thou For The Who?**  
_Firaga Productions_  
1 March 013

**summary** Alchemists be thou for the people. A case study into the lives of several state alchemists, and the places where they each have gone right or wrong.

**rating** Rated T for language and occasional dark content.

**disclaimer **I don't own FMA. Possible spoilers for 03. I haven't seen Brotherhood yet (curse you Netflix for taking it off right before I finished the first anime!), so it's a physical impossibility for me to spoil it. xD

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_When you have the power to do something, it's hard not to try.  
- Shou Tucker_

**1. **

Shou Tucker was not incapable of love.

You could call the man many things. A murderer. Cruel. Evil. Sociopathic. Bat-shit fucking crazy. But the one thing you could never call him was incapable of love.

Shou Tucker met his wife in the fall. Fall would always be his favorite season. It would forever remind him of the day he saw her, exiting the library, long brunette curls tumbling down her back. The wind would always make him think of the young woman, tugging her jacket closer around her body in an attempt to block the wind, cheeks flushed and eyes shining from the wind's sting. He would remember her sweet, musical voice as she agreed to let the man carry her books home for her. The colors of autumn, the oranges and reds and browns, would remind him of the contrast they made against her dark blue eyes, eyes that somehow would be passed down to the daughter they would one day create. Fall would always and forever remind him of his wife.

Fitting, they got married in the fall as well. A small ceremony, since the two had come from poor, simple families. She wore a knee-length white dress, trimmed with lace, and orange lilies in her hair. He remembered the way she giggled when he messed up his lines, the way her cheeks reddened when he ditched the script and used what he knew to describe his love for her.

_"One cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, one must first give up something of equal value. This is alchemy's first law of equivalent exchange. And to you, my love, I give up my life and my heart that I may receive yours in return."_

He loved his wife. He loved the way she would sing in the kitchen as she washed the dishes. The way she begged and pleaded to let them keep the stray, white puppy that cried on their doorstep in the night. The way she would kiss him on the cheek when he was up late studying alchemy, the way would cry his name out when they made love, the way she laughed and danced for joy with him when he told her of a new alchemic discovery.

He never thought he could love anyone more.

Then she became pregnant and gave birth to their daughter.

**2.**

Shou Tucker was a man with a dream.

His wife, daughter, and himself lived in a small, one-bedroom home on the outskirts of Central for quite some time. He called it a simple lifestyle. She called it poverty. She had been a teacher before giving birth to Nina, but Shou insisted that she settle down and watch over Nina instead of working. He worked odd jobs throughout the day, hoping to make enough to buy dinner and alchemic research tools each day. He would spend his nights awake in the living room, hunched over his desk, studying and researching. His goal was to become a state alchemist, to make the salary the other alchemists did, to buy a bigger house with a study and a library, all the toys Nina could ever want. He wanted access to the state alchemist's library in Central. He wanted knowledge. He craved knowledge. For the sake of knowledge, he slept as little as possible. Eventually, he stopped working or sleeping altogether, instead focusing all his energy on his alchemy.

Human transmutation was his specialty.  
He was fascinated by life.  
Fascinated by the creation of life.  
He dreamed of creating a life out of nothing.  
He dreamed of building an immortal, perfect being.  
Creature.  
Animal.  
Superhuman.

**3. **

Shou Tucker started off sane.

He wasn't entirely crazy at first. Really. His dream, initially, was just to understand the secrets of alchemy, to know all he could about the science. He never _planned_ on toying with life, on manipulating DNA and souls and bodies and life.

He started off small. Transmuting rats and frogs together. Transmuting kittens and puppies. That sort of thing. Baby animals were the easiest, their souls still not fully tied to their bodies, their bodies built for change and adaptation as they grew. But it wasn't enough. It was never enough. The State Alchemist's test came and went, and there was always someone else. Always someone with a more interesting, more complicated specimen.

He knew what he needed. He needed a human.

**4.**

So when his wife approached him in the middle of the night, as she often did, and asked him to come to bed, and he said he'd be there momentarily, and she asked if she could bring him anything or help him with anything, and he said he could actually use her help, and he requested for her to bring their dog into the room, their huge white dog Alexander the First, and he forced a muzzle onto the dog and she asked him what the _hell _he thought he was going to do with their dog, their daughter's dog, their sleeping 2-year-old's best friend, and he said he had an experiment he wanted to perform, and she begged him not to transmute the dog, begged him and pleaded, and he finally remembered that the alchemy exam was the next morning, and he grabbed his wife by the arm and drew her close, and he kissed her.

Right then, right there, he kissed her.  
Hard.  
Long.  
Passionately.

And she finally broke away, breathless, and looked at her husband.

Really, truly looked at her husband.

And she saw the fire in his eyes, behind his glasses.  
And he whispered to her.

_"I love you."_

Her eyes widened with fear, and he pushed her to the transmutation circle drawn into the ground. And he clapped his hands and activated the transmutation before she had a chance to react.

**5.**

Shou Tucker would receive his certification the next day. He would become a state alchemist the next day. He would buy a house, he would bring home another dog, Alexander the Second. He would move to his new home, in the neighborhoods of Central.

Before Shou Tucker transmuted his wife and pet together, before she would enter the exam room and say those words, those fateful, _dark_, words..

_"I want to die."_

Before he would become certified and bring home his shiny new pocketwatch and let his daughter play with it.

Before he would eventually transmute his _daughter_, his daughter who looked so remarkably like his wife.

Before he would attempt to ressurect her and would fail to bring back her soul...

...he kissed his wife.  
And he told her he loved her.

This would be his justification. This would be what he would tell himself later on, down the road.

Shou Tucker was not incapable of love.

Or so he believed.

**Bat-shit Fucking Crazy:  
The Story of Shou Tucker  
The Sewing-Life Alchemist**

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